Lin Mu nodded, satisfied with the consumption of Immortal qi.
"It’s drawing qi from ... but it’s manageable," he muttered.
In fact, the rate at which the Divine Sheath absorbed his Immortal Qi was far slower than his passive absorption rate from the environnt. With his current foundation and physique, Lin Mu replenished his reserves faster than they were being consud.
He wasn’t even breaking a sweat.
Wanting to be cautious, he posed a silent question to the Sheath through his sense.
"Do you need additional materials?"
But the Sheath gave no response. No pulse. No image. Nothing but quiet harmony.
He understood the silence—it didn’t need anything else.
It already had what it required.
Perhaps the materials it had absorbed earlier from the nurturing box, or maybe even the lingering essence of the two swords themselves, were sufficient. The Divine Sheath didn’t need to be told what to do. It had chosen Afternoon Pine and Ocean Raker as its own. The swords had leapt into it willingly, as if they had found their true ho.
Lin Mu inhaled deeply, the wind from the open courtyard brushing across his face.
He turned his gaze toward the stars, their silver light filtering through the trees around the Jade Echo Retreat.
"A year or two," he murmured to himself. "That’s all it’ll take."
Yes, that was the impression he received.
No longer would he need to manually guide the swords toward their evolution. The Divine Sheath would refine them constantly, nurturing their sword spirits, tempering their cores, and pushing them toward Peak Grade Immortal status with unwavering focus.
And in the anti... Lin Mu could train, travel, or even fight freely. At most, all he had to do was ensure his qi reserves remained full—which, for him, was effortless.
"All I need to do is live," he smiled faintly. "The Sheath will do the rest."
For a cultivator like Lin Mu—who had long known the pain of carrying burdens alone—this was more than a supportive tool.
It was a companion.
A quiet guardian, constantly working in the background, helping his legacy grow even stronger.
He stood there in the courtyard for a few more minutes, simply basking in the quiet satisfaction of the mont. Knowing that with each passing day, Afternoon Pine and Ocean Raker would be walking closer to their final evolution.
And when the day ca that they reached Peak Grade... he knew the battles ahead would be t with blades worthy of a Sovereign.
Despite all this though, Lin Mu’s curiosity hadn’t faded, not even after discovering the miraculous nurturing power of the Sword Cradle Divine Sheath.
On the contrary, the more he learned, the more questions arose in his mind.
The sheath’s purpose seed clear—it nurtured swords. But Lin Mu wondered just how strict that definition was.
Was it only swords?
Could it accept other bladed weapons?
After all, sabers and daggers shared so similarities with swords.
Their forms were different, yes, but their essence as cutting tools and weapons wasn’t too far removed.
"What about sabers?" Lin Mu mused, reaching into his spatial ring.
He retrieved a low-grade immortal saber—a curved blade, broader and slightly heavier than a standard sword. It was a spare he had picked up from so corpse he didn’t even rember, barely used and largely forgotten until now.
Without hesitation, he approached the sheath on his back.
The mont he brought the saber close, the Sword Cradle Divine Sheath released a deep, humming vibration—a sound that Lin Mu instinctively recognized as rejection.
Clink!
The saber was struck by a sudden invisible force, shattering into fragnts mid-air. Lin Mu narrowed his eyes, watching as pieces of the tal scattered across the courtyard floor, the once-glinting blade now reduced to nothing but scrap.
"Definitely a no," he muttered, surprised at the intensity of the reaction.
For the sheath to shatter an immortal weapon, even if low grade like that, was stunning. A testant to its power.
Still not satisfied, he pulled out a dagger next—a slender, sharp weapon typically used for swift, lethal strikes. It had once belonged to an assassin he’d defeated and had been languishing in his collection ever since.
Again, he attempted to bring it close to the sheath.
The reaction was instantaneous. A force—colder and sharper than before—lashed out from the sheath.
Crack!
The dagger didn’t even resist. It crumbled into dust, collapsing into a pile of dull tal shavings that shimred briefly before fading into stillness.
Lin Mu let out a soft sigh and scratched his head.
"So... swords only. Strictly swords."
He crouched beside the remains of the shattered saber and dagger, intending to clean them up—when sothing unusual happened.
The Sword Cradle Divine Sheath released a soft pulse—a thrum of power—and the air rippled. The fragnts on the ground began to shake.
Then—like water drawn into a drain—they were sucked into the sheath in a seamless spiral of tallic dust.
Fwoooosh.
Gone.
Lin Mu blinked.
"It... took them in?"
But this ti, it hadn’t rejected them with the intent to destroy. It had accepted them—but not as swords, nor as weapons to be nurtured.
He focused his Immortal Sense into the sheath and imdiately sensed the change.
"It didn’t absorb them for improvent," he murmured, "it used them... as fuel."
That single realization made Lin Mu pause.
He scanned the internal space of the sheath and could feel a slight increase in its passive warmth—almost like soone had just stoked a forge. It wasn’t much, but it was tangible.
"So it doesn’t accept non-swords as companions... but it will devour them to empower itself."
That changed everything.
In his journey as a cultivator, Lin Mu had amassed countless weapons—so gained from slain foes, others as rewards, and many more simply found along the way. Most of them weren’t worth selling or keeping, and up until now, they had served no purpose other than taking up space in his spatial ring.
But now?
"I’ve been sitting on a stockpile of fuel all along," he said with a smile.
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